The CIA's Tax-Exempt Psychologists

Whatever your view is of the national security questions surrounding the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques — torture, some call it — or of the wisdom of revisiting the matter in detail a decade later, it's worth pausing for a moment to consider the whole situation as an example of big government in action. The CIA apparently paid $81 million to a contractor run by two psychologists. NBC News reports that "The deal initially provided the two principals with $1,000-a-day tax-free retainers."

I'd love to see the text and legislative history of the law, if there is one, declaring that income earned by psychologists for interrogating detained terrorism suspects is exempt from taxation. I guess it's an example of the rule that "there's always a tax angle."